Not until I put a few fall items.

I will trade you some zinnia seeds for some of you Mex. tomato seeds.

k

I had tomatoes like that last year. They were called Sweet Millions. I've also seen them in the grocery store selling under the name Champagne tomatoes (for $8.00/lb).....

Right now, my one broccoli had is flowering (darn it...how is it possible it's already flowering when none of the others even have heads yet????? First round of lettuce is just about done...peas have been spectacular. Purple pepper is ready to be picked and the red cherry peppers are just starting.

We're trying zucchini in hay bales this year, since they took over the garden last year and they're still small, but LOADED with flowers....My watermelon seems to be getting ready to flower.

On some things we're really ahead, on others, really behind. The weird weather. My bloodroot geraniums have already changed colour and one of my toadlilies have already bloomed. Most of my daylilies are just starting though - go figure.

LOL. I've never heard this song, by it made me giggle. ;)
I am growing chocolate mini bell peppers, Ruffles red pepper, Pizza jalapeno pepper, Tiffen Mennonite tomato (it looked so cool and pink) , a roma tomato, and a cucumber is climbing near my daylilies and morning glories.

I wanna see pics :) I don't grow veggies but I do have basil and oregano and friends that grow more than they need. I am rich with yellow home grown tomatoes...I love that smell...like skunk...only home grown have that musky odor...DH laughs but that is what is smells like to me. PICS ...please ...c

on_greenthumb,
These are not Sweet Millions or Champagnes. I've grown those. Sweet Millions are tiny tomatoes, smaller than Sweet 100s, and the SM plants are small, made for growing in small spaces or pots.

These are already 4 ft tall and still growing. There are no lateral branches. Odd looking. These tomatoes (fruit) are the size of tennis balls, round, shiny, deep red but grow in clusters like grapes.

I imagine they were developed so commercial growers could plant them close together and get more crops per square foot. I bought some tall, square collapsible cages at the farm supply, thinking they would get big like Sweet 100s or other grape-type tomatoes. But they are not. I had to put stakes in the cages to support the plants. They are not filling up the cages, just going straight up! Maybe they will though as the season progresses. We shall see. It's a fun experiment, anyway. I have two 15 ft rows of them.

I have never seen these tomato plants sold at nurseries locally or on-line. They are so delicious and keep well. If they taste that good from the supermarket, I cannot imagine how good they will be homegrown.

Kathy, I will send you some seeds. ;)
I don't need zinnia seeds though, but thank you.

I'll take some pics tomorrow to show you guys.
Later...
~Annie

crackingtheconcrete,

That song was written by Rogers & Hammerstein from their musical production/movie of "OKLAHOMA".

Oh What a Beautiful Morning

Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I've got a beautiful feelin',
Everything's goin' my way.

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
There's a bright golden haze on the meadow.
The corn is as high
As an elephant's eye...
And it looks like it's climbin'
Clear up to the sky!

Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I've got a beautiful feelin',
Everything's goin' my way.

All the sounds of the earth are like music.
All the sounds of the earth are like music.
The breeze is so busy
It don't miss a tree...
And that old Weepin' Willow
Is laughin' at me!

Oh, what a beautiful mornin',
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I've got a beautiful feelin',
Everything's goin' my way.

-----------------------------

There's another verse about "a little brown maveric". (cute)
You can look it up if you are interested.

I have always loved this song. I sing it a lot.

Put a happy song in your heart and sing it all the day!

~Annie

Gee Annie, we had corn that high one year, when we were just starting out where we are now, over 45 years back. There wasn't any garden just grass and a shrub or two. When the grass mysteriously started to disappear:) I planted a block of corn, no room for that now but I am sneaking my heirloom beans and other veggies in amongst the flowers, true cottage style right LOL. I've just been given an heirloom bean from Japan, was told that beans were a fairly new veggie to Japan they have only been around about 300 years there.

Annette

Annette

I love that song, too!

All your vegetable and fruit gardens sound wonderful, everyone. We don't have enough sun or property for that. I do grow herbs on the deck where we get sun. Tried tomatoes there once, but they turned black on the bottom before they ripened. :(

Cyn,
That is called, "Blossom End Rot".
Usually caused by not enough water and watering overhead, but other factors can cause that too. Look it up. Mine get that from time to time, so I change how I am caring for them and it stops. Too much water or not enough when the temps are too cold or too hot.

I've got large pots of tomatoes and basil set in amongst roses and daylilies. They are doing great and I like the "Cottagey" look. :)
I just discovered something awhile ago. THought I'd pass it on. The Zucchinis have been being attacked by those nasty old squash bugs BIG Time. I've been picking them off and squishing them and cleaning off the eggs from the leaves. What a pain. But I discovered that the two Zuchs surrounded by Lemon Basil had none at all. Going to move some of the other basil volunteers over around the others zucchinis and see if that drives them away. I always plant Basils in with my tomatoes and peppers. I thought that was a great discovery that it also warded them off the squash plants. Cool beans!

Yesterday, we had a high temp of 110 degrees F here with a heat index of 111 degrees F. Everything was wilted again this morning. Jeez! The corn was dry looking and the tips of the tomatoes were wilted. The Cantaloupe leaves were looking really awful. I gave everything a good drenching "quick drink" and now I've got the water running in the watermelon patch. Going back out to hook up the soaker hose and let it run a few hours so it will soak down deep(er).
With only two faucets, and EVERYTHING needing watered at the same time, I just have to pick and choose where to start watering first. Poor things. Gads zooks!

I turned the melons over yesterday and the white side has already begun to green. They need a turn once in awhile if you want them to be pretty all the way around, but otherwise it doesn't really matter if you do or don't. As soon as everything gets a good, cool drink and perks back up, I'll go take some pics.

My Grampa grew corn ten ft tall. He didn't grow many flowers, but boy, he was a genius with Vegetables!My father has a picture of him standing in his corn patch and it dwarfs my Grampa - he was a big, rawboned man and 6'4" tall.
Had been a roustabout for the oil companies when he was a young man. Muscular and handsome and the ladies loved him. He was good friends with many of the old-time cowboy singers and songwriters from Oklahoma. (Rambling Annie...I digressed again. DOH!)

Here's the last verse of that song:

"All the cattle are standin' like statues.
All the cattle are standing like statues.
They don't turn their heads
As they see me ride by...
But a little brown Maverick is winking her eye."

"Oh, What a beautiful mornin'
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I have a beautiful feelin',
Everything's goin' my way...eh...
Oh, what a Beautiful Day!"

Have a beautiful day!
~Annie

annie you are always so much fun ! I love to read your descriptions...I can just see what you are talking about. I still make the tomato jam that you gave the recipe for. We just love it...I let the lemon and orange caramelize and they taste like candy. Yum ! c

trailrunner,

Thanks little sister. I'm glad my ramblings don't annoy you. I am so passionate about everything and get carried away. I'm so pleased you like my Great-Grammie's Tomato Preserves. Ya, the caramelized orange and lemon (and lime) in it is my favorite part! (he he he).

Lol. You are fantastic, Annie :)
I've seen Oklahoma once, but all I remember is "Ooooooooooooooooooooklahoma where the wind, something something something. Lol"
I think its great to be passionate about living, growing things. They keep the world beautiful even when life is discouraging.:)
*traipses down alleyway, exuberantly smooching tomatoes* ;)

I have memories of sitting next to my mother on the piano bench while she played and that song and we sang it together. That was over 50 years ago, she is gone, but thanks for prodding that memory to the surface.

I have lots of vegetables growing, but in a separate part of the yard - with a few flowers mixed in.

I would sing that song really loud to wake my kids up in the morning, I dont think they were ever impressed with the song or my singing! I grow veggies with some flowers in my deerproof garden area. I'm still waiting for my tomatoes to flower, we had a frost on June 17 that set them back, even in walls of water, lost 5 out of the 8 canaloupe plants but my potatoes bounced back beautifully. Sweetannie4u, please post pics of your flowers and veggies, you are teasing the rest of us with your descripion of your yard!

Annie, did your "Apocalypse Now" daylily come back and bloom this year? Mine didn't bloom at all last year, but this time they are beautiful. The plant itself didn't get very large, but there are at least 4 - 5 blooms on each - a real dark, dark purple,too.

Annie, or should I say Ado Annie? (LOL) I would love to see pictures of your garden, too. I'm growing some veggies in pots this year and some out in the kitchen garden. I'm thinking about making some raised beds on one end of that garden, just for vegetables, after this spring. It's been so wet and cool through the end of June that the veggies are even smaller than usual. Although I did find out...roma tomatoes love growing in pots. At least mine do :)

Annie, I love my veggies too. That is a very nice tip about the lemon basil because I am having TERRIBLE troubles this year with both stink bugs, squash bugs, cuke beetles etc. So frustrating. I have tiny round stink bugs which migrate from the empty field across the street. Nobody ever cuts this back although it is privately owned. I am hoping a few of us can cut it back some this week. I really need a good gas powered weed wacker to attack this stuff regularly (and my own!!!).

I did not grow corn this year. I have been concentrating on a new area of the garden and simply did not have time or energy to turn soil elsewhere for corn. I guess I could also use a small tiller at some point, huh?

I will re-plant squash and cucumber elsewhere in the garden in the next few days. We have some farmer friends who come to the local farm market, and they have decided to be our community "farm brains". It is a nice time exchanging information, seed starts and plants, snippets of this and that, information about how our crops are growing etc. They are good people and I really appreciate them so much.

This is the entrance into the veggie garden. I got a very late start planting it (because the fence was going in, and will be continued in the fall).

That's a jujube tree right there! Growing like a weed this year. Surrounded by all kinds of basils for various pestos and drying, and lemon catnip for teas and sweets. The gal across the street has chickens, and we trade stuff. So I plant basils out here because she enjoys them so much.

Here is the new garden, growing:

I am still planting it, so it will hopefully get more lush. The soil is TERRIBLE and I am having to add copious amounts of organics and will for the next few years. It is relentlessly hot, but eventually will be partly shaded by an oak on the side, and partly by a fig which I need to plant, at the back of this area. That will make things much happier on these 95 degree days.

Peach salsa. The peaches are not from my garden, but everything else is.

The photos I took of the main veggie garden were not so great, so I will have to take more. It is growing abundantly and we are now harvesting beans, peppers, tomatoes, okra. I am in the middle of 9 day icicle pickle making (half batch, I'll make another batch with the hopefully next crop of cukes). There are melons on the vines, and I planted tons of sweet potatos this year. They really liked that crappy soil last year, so here's hoping for an extra good crop. I purchased specialty plants this year through the mail, and am hoping to keep some going for next year if we like those varieties. I've already started some plants for fall. Loads of herbs that I would like more of..I'm trying to take advantage of the heat and start heat lovers now.

GGG are you "timing" their temp?

You have more ambition than I do this year. Nice work, GGG.

girlgroupgirl, your garden is awesome! I love its shape and stone slabs! Peach salsa sounds interesting. When I was in high-school back in NE, I had someone's tomato relish and it was the most.amazing thing ever and I can't find the person who made it, or a recipe, so every time I see tomatoes, I kick myself for being dumb and not asking for the recipe. Serves me right for thinking about boys, rather than tomatoes. ;)

Fabulous garden! Peach salsa is so good. Wonderful!

Plantmaven, do you mean taking notes on how many days to germinate? Yes. I surely do and chart the temps day/night and sort of in my own way rate humidity. Today white Baptista is up. I've tried baptista many times with winter sowing. A 3 hr. warm water soak and then a planting at 90 days/75 nights and germination in 7 day! Sages I can never get to germinate are up in 3 days (surface sow). I want to get things going now so I can put them under a plastic dome outside for winter and really get them growing...they will be ready in spring for planting and be a good size. This new area needs perennials, and I'm trying some permaculture methods - and utilizing nitrogen fixing plants in places...(plus we just need more perennials in there!

schoolhouse,
Yes, my Apocalypse Npw has been and still is blooming. The plants got huge! In fact, the base and leaves are much bigger and sturdier than any other daylily I have. They bloomed last year too, but this year I have more plants.
In fact, all the daylilies are taking over that rose bed! So I am slowly getting all the roses moved to other locations and I'm going to let that be a daylily bed. Might as well.

Okay, okay. I will work on getting some photos downloaded into my photobucket account tomorrow.

GGG, your place has come a long way since you first began! I am impressed! I wouldn't have known where to start. I love the slabs too. Are those broken chunks of concrete? I se those in my garden. One man's junk is another man's treasure.

We have a 40% chance for rain tomorrow and 30% the following day. It won't drop the temps down out of triple digits, but the precip is certainly welcome. If I don't have to water one or two days this week, I can just stay in the house and get some housework done. Maybe bake bread. I bought Bread flour today for just that reason. I have more peaches to make into Salsa. This time, I will use my own garden Jalapenos and it will be hotter, the way we like it. I have okra to slice up and put into the freezer too.

Going to bed. Can't keep my eyes open.

Good Night all!
~Annie

Annie, all the stone in my garden is broken concrete except for a bit at the "purple house". I once bought some purple Pennsylvania field stone but now because of the cost of fuel, it is WAY too expensive to buy it. Love the color but not the $$! Ha Ha!
Here is the "regular" vegetable garden (the first one). Still in wooden boxes. Eventually we'll have a uniquely shaped garden made out of the stacked concrete. For now, this is working.

Here it is from the driveway garden. This fall that fence will be replaced with a picket fence, finally!!!

You can see here the bare spots. Beans have been such a problem this year with the heat. Rust every time. Frustrating!!! And the one more bare bed was cucumbers, attacked by beetles and then wilted. I have a whole darned squash vine also wilted. target="_blank">

This is what you see entering the driveway to your right:

Those are limas. Not a SINGLE, not one, pole bean. The birds kept stealing the beans or they would just rot out. I have never had that problem before!

Oh, wow! Looks beautiful!
It has been a terrible year here too for nearly everything.
Squash bugs and wilt got my 3 spring-planted Zucchini. So I replanted last month and "so far", even though there are bugs, there hasn't been an wilt, but of course they are just beginning to bloom. The Yellow bush beans and Italian bush beans just sat there and sat there. I mulched with wheat straw, and now they are making beans out the kazoo! The Purple beans have been blooming, and blooming, but not a beans yet. The blooms just fall off. What the...?
(I planted them purple, yellow, purple, yellow, thinking they would look so pretty), especially with the purple cabbages. Then hens ate the cabbages. I managed to get the green early cabbages to maturity and shared them with Mother. So tender, juicy and sweet.
The corn is making ears. Grasshoppers are gnawing the hell out of the leaves and I saw one or two of the tassels bent over (grrr). I've been capturing them and tossing them to the hens. No drastic damage, but I bought some liquid Sevin to use if push comes to shove. Getting okra now from the early planting and the June planting is starting to grow.
Tomatoes: I've gotten a few from the 2 Early Girl plants, but few and far between, although they were delicious. The Cherokee Purple has ONE tomato now, and I picked the second Lemon Boy yesterday. Hey! That's two more than anyone else around here has. The locals here in town tell me their gardens burned up. Some guy in the store down at Chandler the other day told me the same thing and two other men shook their heads. Their mouths dropped when I told them my garden hadn't burned up. They said they would be coming to get tomatoes from me. (not with the puny production I'm getting dudes!)
I got great lettuces this spring, but the broccoli didn't head. I got great cabbages, though. What in the heck? I ALWAYS get great Broccoli! I got about two cups of Snow Peas. Just about the time they started to put on, the heat wave hit Oklahoma and even with a shade over them, their dried up in three days. The pods were very tastey, but again, a puny amount for all the vines I had. Usually I have more than we'll eat.
The wheat straw and the drip lines in the corn, the two larger tomato patches and watermelon saved the day. The rest I have been hand watering with good success. All the tomatoes are covered in blooms, but now the da** Blister Beetles are eating off all their leaves. I've been picking them off and squishing them and then washing off their poop (which attracts more beetles), but they are starting to get the better of the Roma tomatoes. So far, I haven't found any on the BeefMasters or Super Sweet 100s. Found a few on one of the two potted Cherokees (squish, squish), but none on the potted Lemon Boy next to them. Grasshoppers, beetles, blister beetles, squash bugs, and other kinds too, and Japanese beetles are devouring everything. My roses have been sick since June. First it was too rainy and too hot in early spring, then too cold in mid-spring and then in June it went straight into triple digit temps. Yesterday the promised rain storms moved into the state. Can you believe some areas ended up flooding? They got 7 inches in just a matter of minutes! We got a slight sprinkle yesterday, but temps never got above 95 here. Yeah! This morning I went out and found it POURING down! I set the plastic trash cans to catch the patio water and the 5-gallon buckets were already set up out in the garden, so I will have it for hand watering. It rained down hard and heavy. Just the five minutes I was out there it filled the cans to 1/4 full! Wow! It was a deluge! Everything is so green and refreshed this morning and the temperature is like early June should have been. Weird weather. Just flat out strange!
I didn't have to water yesterday or today. Yippee!
Ended up being up all night with my new kitten, 'Meeshka Moushka'. She is a beautiful tortoiseshell with white mittens and boots. About 6 wks old. Sweet, smart and VERY well behaved, but frisky and so cute. I thought she would die last night. High fever and respiratory difficulty. Poor baby. I sat on the sofa holding her all night. If I took my hand off of her and tried to nap, she would cry. So, I kept stroking her and telling her I loved her. Man, I'm tired. I finally got her to take some goat's milk from a syringe this morning at 6:30. She took about 3 CCs or more. Then went to sleep purring on my bed wrapped in a big warm towel. Maybe I can get some sleep since I don't have to water! :)
I tried to upload pics to photobucket account a bit ago, but my computer kept kicking me off (grrr). Will try again later. And the drain is partly clogged somewhere in the basement. (good grief!)
"When it rains, it ours!" But no complaints from me there!

Thanks for sharing your garden pics with me (us).
Hasta!

Correction 1:

My kitten's name is 'Meeshka Pooska'

Correction 2: "When it rains, it Pours!"

From the same musical I like the verse that says "a hawk making lazy circles in the sky." I can mentally see that each time that I hear it.

soxxxx,
I like all the songs from that Musical.
That verse is from the song, 'OKLAHOMA', which you probably know, but for those who do not, here are the words:

OKLAHOMA

Brand new state!
Brand new state!
Gonna treat ya great!
Gonna give you barley,
Carrots and pertators;
Pasture for the cattle,
Spinach and termaters;
Flowers on the prairie where the June-bugs zoom!
Plenty of air,
And plenty of room!
Plenty of room to swing a rope;
There's plenty of heart
And plenty of hope!

OKLAHOMA!
Where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain.
Where the wavin' wheat,
Can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain!

OKLAHOMA!
Every night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk,
And watch a hawk
Makin' lazy circles in the sky!

(Refrain)
We know we belong to the land,
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say,
Yip! I yip I oh-we-ay!
We're only sayin',
You're doin' fine Oklahoma,
OKLAHOMA's Ok!

This one became the OK state song. :) ~Annie BTW \- I posted a link to my Facebook album if you wanna see my vegetable gardens and a few of my flowers. It has since rained three mornings in a row, so everything is looking so good and making new flowers too! And the best part of all is that I haven't had to water. I've been able to do a few other things that I needed and wanted to do. I am starting to feel rested. Thank goodness!